I didn’t think I would be engaging in psychobabble so soon again, but I got to thinking about something today while I was out and about. A time when the mind wanders. (The thoughts are often not wasted.)

I got to thinking about things my wife and I were talking about last night and comments she made that I found insightful and worth considering.

But first, something else I recalled this morning — not necessarily related — but I thought I saw a connection.

 

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I have a male friend almost the same age as me whom I sort of inherited from another acquaintance of mine. We usually get together for lunch or dinner. We have a prolonged conversation when we meet. Sometimes he seems in need of companionship and will tend to talk a lot without being a great listener, and sometimes his conversation can be tedious and filled with the minutiae of his daily life: things that would not likely be of interest to someone else.

I have told my wife many times about what I perceive to be [     ]’s being “challenged” when it comes to [     ]’s lack of communication/social skills. But I usually qualify this by saying “[     ] is really a good guy. He means well.”

He’s never mean-spirited.

[     ] seems to be one of those people who are highly intelligent and could run circles around you or me in many school subjects but who do not have a high emotional IQ.

The incident I recalled this morning was when I met [    ] last year for lunch at a diner where we often rendezvous. I was five or ten minutes late. We had agreed to meet there, not outside. I entered the diner. [     ] was already seated in a booth. I walked past it and was looking for him. When I finally found him, he erupted, so to speak, with comments such as: “How could you miss me? I was right there?”

He kept at it. I got annoyed and said: “What’s the big deal, [    ]? Who cares? I’m here, aren’t I? You said to meet you here, didn’t you? You have a problem with that?”

I was actually annoyed.

I told this story a day or two later to a friend, who made a perceptive observation. I was too dim to have seen it. “That’s his way of relating,” he said — in other words, that [     ]’s browbeating me was a kind of (awkward) conversational gambit.

 

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Recalling this this morning, I thought about the conversation with my wife last night.

We were talking about people we have known who often seemed to be exaggerating their achievements or accomplishments.

The parent whose son or daughter wrote an article for the school paper who it is quite possible will become the next George Will or Maureen Dowd.

The person in a firm or organization whom you know through acquaintance with the firm or them personally who is supposedly a mover and shaker or very important, and it turns out that they are not as important or successful as they claim to be.

When I find out about such “deceptions” — you hear from someone’s spouse that their partner has started his or her own business and is knocking ‘em dead, only to find out later that they have an office and business cards, but very few clients — I tend to joke about such stories repeatedly with my wife.

Don’t be so quick to, she said.

As we followed this train of thought a little further, I realized that she was right. What she said was that everyone wants to amount to something; I realize that this applies to ME. Whatever accomplishments I have — this includes very small and/or not notable ones — I want to be recognized and perhaps acknowledged for them; and, what’s more, for this to lead people to credit me with being admirable in some respect or another. And when it comes to conversational gambits like my friend’s, I myself am constantly trying to engage people I meet or associate with with self-styled clever, witty remarks which may or may not interest, amuse, or engage them

 

— Roger W Smith

  February 12, 2020